Basket Of Deplorables

“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.” 

The famous "basket of deplorables" speech. Hillary Clinton said those words on September 9, 2016. Jason Miller, senior communications adviser for Trump’s campaign, responded “Just when Hillary Clinton said she was going to start running a positive campaign, she ripped off her mask and revealed her true contempt for everyday Americans." 

I knew Hillary had opened a can of worms, and at the time I thought she had been a bit too extreme. Around that time, there was controversy swirling around David Duke's support for Trump -- Trump denied knowing who David Duke was, which was a lie. Trump for years had been flirting with the idea of running for president. On February 13, 2000, in an interview by Matt Lauer of NBC, he declared he would not accept the nomination of the Reform Party for president. There was this exchange:

LAUER: “When you say the [Reform] party is self-destructing, what do you see as the biggest problem with the Reform Party right now?”

TRUMP: “Well, you’ve got David Duke just joined — a bigot, a racist, a problem. I mean, this is not exactly the people you want in your party.”

On February 26, 2016, Trump was interviewed by CNN's Jake Tapper:

TAPPER: “I want to ask you about the Anti-Defamation League, which this week called on you to publicly condemn unequivocally the racism of former KKK grand wizard David Duke, who recently said that voting against you at this point would be ‘treason to your heritage.’ Will you unequivocally condemn David Duke and say that you don’t want his vote or that of other white supremacists in this election?”

TRUMP: “Well, just so you understand, I don’t know anything about David Duke. Okay? I don’t know anything about what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists. So, I don’t know. I don’t know, did he endorse me or what’s going on, because, you know, I know nothing about David Duke. I know nothing about white supremacists. And so you’re asking me a question that I’m supposed to be talking about people that I know nothing about.”

Later in that same interview came the following exchange:

TAPPER: “Okay. I mean, I’m just talking about David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan here, but --

TRUMP: “I don’t know any — honestly, I don’t know David Duke. I don’t believe I have ever met him. I’m pretty sure I didn’t meet him. And I just don’t know anything about him.”

Anyway, back to Hillary's "basket": As I said, I thought at the time that Hillary's comments were too extreme, and that she could have deflected a lot of the barrage of criticism directed toward her by simply acknowledging that "half of Trump’s supporters" was an overstatement, and that she meant that a smaller number, including the David Duke supporters and their ilk, were to be included in the basket. 

I was wrong. Looking back, I realize now that Hillary had nailed it, and that indeed half of Trump's supporters were a "basket of deplorables." Trump got 74 million votes in 2020 (Biden got 81 million). If half of those votes were from the "basket of deplorables," then Trump got around 37 million votes from Republicans who could be considered more or less decent people. If you exclude the "deplorables," Trump got 37 million votes, compared to Biden's 81 million.